YouTube Caching Problems

[DaveJ]

I'm just wondering why a company such as YouTube cannot figure out how to properly cache video? Aren't they supposed to know something about internet video?

I do not mind having to wait for a video to load. I understand that only so much can fit through the internet tubes at once. So I can wait. Are there people who like to watch a video for 3 seconds, wait 8 seconds, watch for 3 seconds, wait for 10 seconds, and so on? Is caching something that is beyond the technological abilities of the people at YouTube? I've been to other video websites where the video loads great. Sorry, just making a fuss, while the HD "how to make caramel popcorn" video loads....

[steve2470]

1. Definitely not an expert but....

one thing I can think of is YouTube's capacity to stream video is overwhelmed at times by demand. I would think Google could ramp up YouTube's capacity but that's a corporate decision that might lose them money. Last time I heard, Google was struggling to make any money on YouTube. I'll go look it up again. on edit: my bad, they ARE making money on YouTube now. Ramping up capacity further would cut into profits. See here for profit data.

The other thing is your connection between their servers and your computer. Maybe a router has gone bad or some other problem. I'll await the real experts.

[DaveJ]

2. That's ok, thanks for the reply

I'm just griping about something silly. But it's not about the speed. It can be as slow as it wants. I'm just saying that YouTube should be smart enough to load the video enough first, before it starts playing.

[hobbit709]

3. Easiest way is to pause the video until it's fully loaded, then play it.

That way you at least eliminate all the fits and starts.
Or get youtube downloader
http://download.cnet.com/YouTube-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10647340.html
and then save it on your hard drive to play any time you want.

[DaveJ]

10. Pausing used to work for me -- not now

It seems as though Youtube only wants to download the minimum necessary, and will stop buffering when I press pause. At least on the device I'm using now, Google TV. I pressed pause, walked away for 15 minutes, came back, it still had the same problem. My laptop is not 100% reliable either. I even see the grey bar progressing, making it look as though it's buffering, but nope.

But this is not really a tech support issue, as me wanting to whine and moan, and come up with conspiracy theories. I'm sure there are programmers at YouTube perfectly capable of making a better video playback mechanism, but they don't, for some reason. Either intracompany politics, or more likely the big TV companies do not want people watching too much video on the web. Somehow they have connections at YouTube/Google and are talking about what a horrendous effect internet would have on cable revenues and how that money is important to the U.S. economy. And all I want to do is watch a caramel popcorn video.

[HopeHoops]

4. A lot depends on the number of people smashing any particular server.

If something major is getting streamed by 10 times more of the maximum expected, that's going to slow shit down. I pause right after it stops, go get something to drink, and come back when it is almost completely cached. Then it plays smoothly.

Another problem can be with the browser. None of them are good at fully releasing unused memory and they can get bloated and really start to mess up the load times. Check in the Windows Task Manager to see what the memory usage is for your browser (while you aren't trying to do anything with it.) If it is up over 300,000, you might want to try closing it out and loading it again. If the process doesn't go away after you close all the windows, nuke it with the task manager. Lingering Windows Media Player processes can also be a problem. Nuke those too.

[SirRevolutionary]

5. The problem is, YouTube is streaming bits of information that don't get cached in the browser

It is best to pause and let it load, I do the same thing with Netflix if it's acting choppy. Images can be cached in the browser, but YouTube streams videos in pieces so they don't stay on your machine. Once you close the browser window, it's released from memory. If you visit a Flash website, the swf will be cached in your browser, but not a streamed video, and that's the technology YT uses.

Also, since YT is automated and allows users to upload whatever videos they want, they must have their preset time period for buffering the video before playing it back. On other websites sans the public user automation necessity (like Daily Show clips for example), the designer/developer can adjust the buffering time to optimize for the best playback performance, but YT's automation is more likely a "one size fits all" type of deal.

[JohnyCanuck]

6. I have noticed a change with Youtube vids in the last week or so.

Previously I could do as you suggest and just pause a Youtube video for a couple of minutes and let it download, and I could see by the advancing grey line (ahead of the little button thingy that advances to the right as the video plays) that the video was downloading. When the grey line got long enough, and I figured the cache had filled to the point that I could watch pretty much the whole video (or at least a good chunk of it) while the remainder downloaded in the background, I would hit the play button. The video then played without interruption and either completed, or for a long video, I might pause it again and let another chunk download in advance prior to manually resuming play.

About a week ago I noticed that the videos would not continue downloading after I hit the pause button like they did before. I have Windows 7 and I have also installed on my system an aftermarket app that provides you with the little flashing double blue screen icon in the system tray that indicates whether your computer is transmitting/receiving data. (This icon was standard in XP but for some reason Bill Gates decided we didn't need it anymore in Windows 7.) Now if I let a video play until it stops automatically to refill fill the cache again, as the video is in a paused state the blue screens in the system tray flash or are on steady indicating the data is being transferred as the cache fills. However, at this point, if I click the pause button on the video to let the buffer fill up with a good chunk of data before I manually restart the video, the data does not continue to download. I see the blue screens in the system tray flash a couple of times and then they permanently go out indicating data transfer has stopped. The only way to watch the video then is to let it automatically pause itself every 30 seconds or so to reload the cache automatically which is a real pain.

Sure you can use a downloader to download the entire Youtube video and then watch it that way, but for me it takes away some of the convenience of being able to watch the videos directly on Youtube. Seems from my point of view like something was changed on Youtube's end that would not permit the data to continue to download if the video was manually placed in pause.

[SirRevolutionary]

7. Another thing with YouTube videos

There are cue points in most or all videos. I'm not sure if that's something YouTube just decides on or if they give you the option to add your own cue points (I don't think they do though). But you'll notice if you click around on the scrub bar, it'll seem to consistently load from an exact spot and then the gray bar will fill up while the red (for the playhead) catches up. Because it's streaming, it never really loads the entire video into memory unless you just hit play and let it go to the end. There could definitely be bugs in the video itself where it's dying at a certain cue point, maybe that's what you're seeing.

On certain videos, I've noticed that seems to be the problem. Somehow, they seem to get messed up on the cue points and just won't play, or they take way too long. I've seen similar problems anyway. Is it only on certain videos that you've seen and others play fine? Could be server hiccups too, if a bunch of people are hitting the same video at one time (like HopeHoops said) it could cause headaches for playback temporarily.

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Interesting discovery, my problem exists in Firefox but not IE.

Just out of idle curiosity, I thought I would try using IE to watch some recent Youtube vids that were causing problems with buffering as I described above. Well whadja know! Everything works fine in IE. With the IE browser, I can pause a video and let the buffer fill for a few minutes and then manually restart the video when I want it to start playing again and it works like a charm. When I checked the same vids again using my default Firefox 8.0 browser to play the videos, the problem became apparent once more. As soon as I manually put a video in pause, the data transmission stalled and no further download occurred as long as I had the video manually in the paused state. This problem now looks like a Firefox browser issue rather than a problem with Youtube itself. However I am not aware of downloading/installing any updates to my Firefox browser for a couple of months at least and this issue with the videos only became noticeable about a week ago.

Anyway if the problem doesn't exist with IE but only in Firefox, I guess it looks as if Youtube is off the hook.

[SirRevolutionary]

9. I don't doubt that in the slightest

FireFox has definitely gone buggy over the years, not quite what it used to be. I've been using Google Chrome on OS X more and more. I noticed that Netflix had massive problems when I ran it in FireFox and as soon as I tried in Chrome it was trouble free.

Live and learn Team FireFox has to deal with their memory management better, until then it's off to the other browsers.

[DaveJ]

11. YT's automation is no size fits anything

And I think they're doing it on purpose. Or maybe they are just targeting me personally .

As I said above, pausing to let it buffer stopped working for me. But that's not even the point. I'm not good at expressing my points... My point is that YT is perfectly capable of creating a user friendly interface, but they don't. That's what is annoying me. There is no cure for my frustration over the corporate and economic politics. Sorry for taking valuable time griping like an insane man. I often get upset when I see poorly written software that I know could be better, but there is some political force preventing progress.